Skepticism

EVENTS

A little bit about the new guy

It’s an honor and a treat to have had PZ ask me to join him here at Pharyngula. Though there have been months lately where I haven’t been a particularly exuberant participant in the lively and collegial discussions here, my relationship with Pharyngula goes back a ways — back to ought-four, in fact, back when the blog was hosted on the Cray 2 in PZ’s undersea lair, and commenters underwent a series of strong electric shocks in an early form of CAPTCHA technology. It was just me and Hank Fox commenting back then, I think, and Old Man Buell the painter, and a giant ground sloth name of Shep. Good times.

Despite that long tenure, though, I haven’t been really active here all that much. I read regularly, but aside from that lurking, and the requisite supporting you all in email, I’m really kind of a newbie here. So a few things about me to get out of the way so you know who you’re talking to:

1) I’m a white cis straight male in my 50s. I live in Joshua Tree, California, an unincorporated community inhabited by about 10,000 hippies, artists, methheads and wingnuts, which is near the similarly-named National Park. I fit right in here. I spent most of my life living in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I worked as an environmental activist, writer and editor. I was born in Upstate New York but haven’t been back for more than a decade. I live with my fianceé Annette in a house with roadrunners, Gambel’s quail, and Joshua trees in the backyard. That last part may well help me finish the book on Joshua trees I’ve been working on since before Ron Paul was born.

2) I’m the guy who had his Jeep stolen and totaled this year who Hank Fox kindly did some good deeds toward, and you may well have donated to replace the Jeep — a lot of folks did, enough that I haven’t caught up with thank you notes. Eep. I haven’t replaced the Jeep yet — honestly, I’ll probably be getting a more economical 2-wheel pickup or something, used, from the grapevine in town here — but the kindness shown by Hank, FTBlogs, and associated kind people put me way closer to getting it. I’ll post a picture when that happens, and thank you again.

3) I’m an atheist. I came by it the easy way: I went to Catholic school. Being an atheist hasn’t occupied much space in my head since I figured out I was an atheist approximately 40 years ago. I’m luckier than a lot of people in that I haven’t suffered for my lack of belief, and I’m grateful for that.

4) I’ve been an environmental activist, with a focus mostly on wild landscapes and biodiversity, since around 1992. I was a professional gardener before that. This past year I’ve been working with my friend Jim André of the Sweeney Granite Mountains Desert Research Center to launch a group called Desert Biodiversity, which works to let people know about the rather astonishing biological diversity in North America’s deserts. I won’t polemicize about that here much unless something pisses me off, but I will share cool sciency things about the desert when I find them, and I will also post ChasCPeterson’s bio in our Board of Advisors page. Oops. Sorry Chas.

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Comments

One year back when I was doing time in Stillwater, OK, we were participating in the Great Backyard Bird Count and we got a roadrunner in our yard. Only one we saw in 5 years there.
They’re cool. Most feathered-dinosaur-like.

OK I was out of the room when the announcement was made. So what is your position exactly?
Are going to be writing post here on PZ’s blog or on freethoughtblogs generally.
Are you going to be taking over when PZ is otherwise busy like with teaching or traveling or incapacitated? Are you going to just post on a regular basis. Will you have a schedule?

just some more info would be nice other wise it is just the normal things that happen out of the blue and are kind of unpredictable.

only if you feel like explaining anything it is up to you.
uncle frogy

I have driven past/through there way too many times. One of my best friends lives in the (extended) area. Camping trips, three gallons of water stacked on the pack with filters in hope of finding a gravel basin, I LOVE that part of the world. Spent a lot more time in the El Mirage vicinity, though. Fishhook cactus!

Chas, this roadrunner is hilariously afraid of the Gambel’s quail, which it outweighs by a factor of five or so. Roadrunners eat the baby quail as you likely know, and the male quail charge in blind rage at roadrunners as a result.

Aww, shit. I was digging deep into the history of the internet to find your Maoist PDF file (and response to Michael BayRooBay), “What’s Liberal about the Liberal Arts? — The Graphic Novel,” but it appears to have disappeared from the Internets.

Is there any chance you can repost this for the noobs?

Oh, and welcome to FtB. I just registered at PZ’s place under my real fucking name to help welcome you aboard. I may not have a job on Monday.

That’s great. I became a regular lurker of your blog since you wrote a parody of (I think his name is) Jessie Bering’s post on hebephilia (I laughed it for 3 days. It was really portraying what’s wrong with many “pull a justification off their asses” evolutionary psychologists.)
Unfortunately, google reader doesn’t seem to understand your blog exist. I will happily read you on pharyngula.

Chris, it’s okay. I like my job well enough, but my mother is dying, and they only allow three days paid bereavement for an employee’s parent. So don’t feel too bad if I lose my job. It’s probably my mom’s fault. If only she were more compliant.

Wow. I am so excited that you’re here, Chris!! Welcome!!
I’ve been following you since walks with Zeke. My heart still mourns him, his relationship with you, and his collar. I hope you’ll be comfy here.

Crissa, I’d never heard that scribd charged to download PDFs (which obviously one can print as one likes once they reside on one’s hard drive). I just tested it by hitting the download button on Chris’ PDF, and scribd didn’t charge me anything to do so.

They did ask me to log in to Facebook, with a thing about accessing my stuff any time they like, but since I’m about to go and delete that access-permission in a second, but I’m not much bothered.

@Imagines, you’re checking Coyote Crossing every day? I am so sorry. These days I think checking once a month would suffice.

I’ll probably have stuff over there that doesn’t quite fit here — self involved overly literary Coyote-worshipping things, you know the type — but I admit that the 4 posts a day on average at KCET over the last couple of months has cut into my old blog’s posting frequency a bit.

@tigtog and @crissa: I believe the deal with Scribd is that they allow the owners of documents to charge for people to download them, and act as a middleperson for the transaction. I’ve used them for a while on behalf of a few of my web design clients and never enabled that feature, and I’ve never had a complaint referred to me that people had to pay to download things.

But I might be missing something, so please do let me know if they charge you for downloading something of mine, because if they do they owe me some goddamn money.

I don’t mind the squid, but I expect there will be a list of small CSS tweaks like that which our Fearless Leader will want to implement at some point as part of having two bloggers here. I’ll pass it along.

I’m a 50 YO white genderqueer lesbian in the Bay Area who grew up in Barstow, not far from where you are now. My parents are still there, so I visit often. We have a lot in common! I’m looking forward to reading more of your work.

I’ve been charged for PDFs I was certain the person putting them up didn’t have authorship rights to, and I’ve been told it’s their default. I find their business model to be very, very skeezy. And they have the worst PDF viewer on smartphones, which is really saying something, and don’t let you download to smartphones without it (I guess you’ll bypass their crap security?) I dunno. I just really don’t like them once I got dinged an dug into it.

Don’t want to detract. I hope you’ll be able to fill the gap I was worried about this school season; there are enough A+ blogs that I mostly follow this one instead of reading many (I know I should, but… I could spend all day reading.)

Means I don’t really identify as male or female. It’s a long story, but I spent a few months of soul-searching as to whether I was transgender or not. I realized that although I didn’t feel a bit female, I also didn’t feel a bit male. And since I’ve spent a fair chunk of my life identifying as lesbian, I’ve kept the label.